Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America is turning against facial-recognition software

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 149 posts

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#61

Post by bpyne »

coding123 wrote: post #57
vfc1 wrote: post #55

It's like nuclear power, technology is what we make of it. Do we want to use it for criminal purposes only, effectively to almost make it impossible for someone to commit a violent crime and get away with it and make a much safer society? I'm all for it, there are some nasty people out there, serial killers, pedophilians, drug cartels. This technology deployed at scale would make these crimes much harder to get away…

Ski mask. You might catch/convict a guy with it, but soon after a lot of people are just going to wear them all the time.

Yup. About half the US needs them for 3 or more months per year. And then there's the rise of surgical masks to prevent the spread of viruses.

I also foresee a surge in wide-brimmed hats.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#63

Post by arrozconcosas »

grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

It is not zero-sum. You can increase safety while keeping privacy. Putting airbags in cars makes us safer without losing privacy (to any meaningful degree). Even if there is a relationship curve, you can shift the curve or jump between them.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#64

Post by arrozconcosas »

lazyvoice wrote: post #18
grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

How does this differ from "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about."? Surely it's not difficult for you to imagine fairly common scenarios where your equation is patently untrue. A battered spouse of LEO or a non gender-conforming individual in a theocratic society are only two really easy examples that come to mind. If we assume that individuals who control or have access to surveillance mechanis…

"Nothing to hide" is the worst argument possible on the subject

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#65

Post by alexnewman »

Actually there's a proliferation of private facial recognition software being deployed across almost all large buildings in the united states. it's just behind the scenes and not being used by law enforcement. This is the standard for america, law enforcement gets barred from high tech, but private industry is free to use it. Eventually they sell it back to law enforcement.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#66

Post by briatx »

> Earlier this year the Washington Post reported that many small police departments were abandoning body-worn-camera programmes because of the cost.

> Although the cameras are cheap, officers can generate 15 gigabytes of video per shift; storage costs mount. Police unions often oppose body-worn cameras, fearing they imperil their members by giving superior officers licence to search them for punishable behaviour.

>Other officers complain about the amount of time required to review and redact footage in response to public-information requests.

Sure, the Police themselves don't like the cameras turned on them. Suddenly it is "too expensive".

Then they will turn around and argue for ubiquitous CCTV camera installations.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#67

Post by asdkhadsj »

WeirdFlexButOky wrote: post #50
xena wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance, I am transgender. This kind of technology would allow them to identify "masculine" features of my face that I didn't ask for. This could cause me to be profiled as male, regardless of what my court order or personal preferences say. This kind of technology is fundamentally dangerous to people who do not fit cleanly into the rigid caste-like boxes that are used to categorize people.

+1 from another trans woman

Pardon the ignorant question, but is there an accepted "standard" for pronouns when someone identifies themself as you did?

Which is to say, if you say you're a "trans woman", am I able to infer that your desired gender pronoun is female?

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#68

Post by dsfyu404ed »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #35
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with your sentiment but I don't agree with a ban. Prohibition doesn't work. You should be able to use it but the legal risks and liability you open yourself up to by using it should be strong enough to deter its use except when there truly is no substitute. Asbestos comes to mind as an example. People (often on HN) often run in circles and scream about the sky falling because "OMG it's not banned" but t…

> Prohibition doesn't work You're appropriating sociological behaviors of the individual to maxims at the corporate level, which is ridiculous. Corporations need to be regulated, not coddled in some kind of convoluted, scaled-up, harm-reduction policy.

Public opinion is what ultimately is the determining factor here. If the public does not strongly want to punish companies for doing something then the government will not be successful at punishing companies for doing something. In a democracy government follows public opinion. In the absence of strong public opinion you get corporate interests shaping what government does.

Yeah, sure, ban it. But without social consensus backing up those laws it will have no teeth in practice.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#69

Post by asdkhadsj »

xena wrote: post #38
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree with your sentiment but I don't agree with a ban. Prohibition doesn't work. You should be able to use it but the legal risks and liability you open yourself up to by using it should be strong enough to deter its use except when there truly is no substitute. Asbestos comes to mind as an example. People (often on HN) often run in circles and scream about the sky falling because "OMG it's not banned" but t…

For instance, I am transgender. This kind of technology would allow them to identify "masculine" features of my face that I didn't ask for. This could cause me to be profiled as male, regardless of what my court order or personal preferences say. This kind of technology is fundamentally dangerous to people who do not fit cleanly into the rigid caste-like boxes that are used to categorize people.

It's almost ironic that we're progressing through a social evolution where we have to have conversations with people to understand their desired pronoun; while at the same time developing software that will suffer the same fate. Appearances mean nothing, but that's all (this) software can use.

Perhaps a small badge with visual friendly metadata would be handy. Not that we need to give them more information of course, just thinking out loud. The idea of everyone walking around with a little badge on their chest containing their metadata is oddly dystopian haha.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#70

Post by supahfly_remix »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #69
xena wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance, I am transgender. This kind of technology would allow them to identify "masculine" features of my face that I didn't ask for. This could cause me to be profiled as male, regardless of what my court order or personal preferences say. This kind of technology is fundamentally dangerous to people who do not fit cleanly into the rigid caste-like boxes that are used to categorize people.

It's almost ironic that we're progressing through a social evolution where we have to have conversations with people to understand their desired pronoun; while at the same time developing software that will suffer the same fate. Appearances mean nothing, but that's all (this) software can use. Perhaps a small badge with visual friendly metadata would be handy. Not that we need to give them more information of course,…

> The idea of everyone walking around with a little badge on their chest containing their metadata is oddly dystopian haha.

This idea was tried before, but for just a subset of the population, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge

Post reply on HN